and even rallied him upon one of the new doctrines to which Elvira had
alluded.
"Do you believe that if I go away some one else will have to be baptized
over again for me?"
He looked at her with the same steadfast glance. "It could do no good.
Such salvation is for those who die in ignorance of the truth. But for
you, who have been baptized into the truth and have fallen away, there
is no hope except repentance or the shedding of blood."
Over the low paling she heard the neighbours' children at their play.
Upon the other side was an open lot across which she saw the passers in
the street. She withdrew her hand from his now, but with a sinking at
heart which did not appear to her reasonable because the surroundings
were so tranquil.
He let her go, accompanying her, as any gentleman might, to the gate of
his ground. As he opened it he had taken something from his coat, and he
showed it to her. It was a knife, very bright and sharp. Its blade when
drawn out had a double edge. "It will be better for you," he said
mournfully, "to die than to go"; and then he hid the thing again and
went back.
This time the idea that had been forcing itself into her mind took
possession. For a moment all her strength forsook her; she held to the
post of the gate, looking after him as he disappeared up the narrow
passage between the paling and the house, and then, hurrying onward, she
found that it was only by the greatest effort she could walk with
outward composure.
CHAPTER IV.
Susannah found her rooms as she had left them. Emma was not there to bid
her good-bye, nor did any messenger wait with the money. She set her
parcels ready for the driver to lift and waited until after the hour,
but the chaise did not come.
At last she went down again to the livery stable, hoping, as against
vague but almost overpowering fears, that mere delay was the cause. The
man told her that he understood that she had countermanded her order.
She gave the order again, but now he said that he could not go for the
price named, and when she offered a larger sum, he assured her that his
horses were all out. She knew now that her order had indeed been
countermanded, and by an authority higher than hers. She went back and
boldly entered the prophet's public office.
There were five men in the office. Joseph Smith sat in an elbow-chair
before a central table. His secretary, a middle-aged man, sat at a small
table beside him. Two of the leaders of the Church happened to be
waiting upon some business, and a fresh convert was standing with them,
a well-dressed English artisan but newly arrived. Susannah walked up to
the table and addressed Smith.
"Will you go down to the stable and bring me up a travelling-chaise?"
Smith rose with mechanical politeness, or perhaps with a feint of
politeness. "My dear madam," he expostulated, "I must say--"
"I am sorry," she replied, "that I have not time to hear what you would
like to say. I must ask you to be quick and get me the chaise."
By this time she perceived that his companions were looking at her with
ill-concealed curiosity and excitement, which proved to her that she was
a marked woman. Her bosom dilated with a wilder anger as she looked at
Smith expectantly; he returned the gaze sheepishly, as if dazzled by the
audacity of her command. His face after last night's passion had an
exhausted look like that of a man recovering from an illness.
"You also owe me money," she proclaimed clearly. "Your wife borrowed all
that I had of the money I earned by my school. When you have brought the
chaise you can give me the money."
One of the elders, a sleek man, thinking the prophet at a loss, now made
a wily comment. "Has Sister Halsey paid anything for living in the House
this month back?"
At the insinuation that her money might be justly kept in payment of
this debt if she spurned the Church's hospitality, Susannah's heart
sank. She admitted its justice. It was part of her character to admit
all possible claim against her.
The sleek elder, following his advantage, spoke again. "The money given
for tuition was given because of the ordinance of the prophet, and
should in any case hardly belong to this lady if she is apostate."
Smith had the tact to see his opportunity, and, moreover, it hurt him
sharply, hurt him far more than it hurt Susannah, to hear her right to
the privileges of the place called in question, to hear the opprobrious
term "apostate" cast at her. There were unbelievers in his community
with whose hypocrisy or apostasy he could trifle, but he still had his
faith and his inner circle of affections. Susannah, standing friendless
and penniless, appealed to all that was sacred in the memory of early
days, while her beauty, her courage, her unbounded wrath, stimulated his
love of power. He spoke to the sleek elder in what was commonly called
the prophet's "awful voice," rising, his blue eyes becoming black in
their authoritative flash.
"Our sister Susannah Halsey, because of faithfulness when the Church was
yet poor and unknown, and because of the faithfulness of her husband,
who wears the martyr's crown--our sister Susannah Halsey, I say, is
welcome to the hospitality of the Nauvoo House as long as she has
remained and shall remain; and the money which has been given to her
for the school shall be returned to her, and more shall be added to it,
for she laboured faithfully."
He had left behind his moment of sheepish distress; with the return of
his formal phrases he assumed full prophetical state and escorted
Susannah out of the office with a manner of pompous deference. When they
two stood alone together Susannah was aware that, although circumstances
had not altered in the slightest, although she had just as much reason
for extreme anger as a minute before, yet she could not summon the same
haughty air of command.
"Will you get me the chaise and the money and let me go?"
"But in Carthage," he asked kindly, "who will attend to your wants there
and protect you? I guess, sister, you haven't much notion how difficult
a lady like yourself travelling alone might find it to get along. It
isn't among the Gentiles as with the Saints, where brotherly-kindness is
the rule. I guess you'd better go back to your room and think it over a
day or two longer," he said soothingly. "I'd be very glad to take you
and Emma out for a ride this afternoon if you'd be willing to go--"
"Be quiet." Her words fell sharp and quick in the midst of his gentle
tones. "Make arrangements at once for me to go peaceably, or I will go
out, if need be, to the middle of the Square and proclaim my wrongs, so
that every woman and child in Nauvoo shall know what comes of trusting
to you."
She had chosen her threat carefully. She knew well that he understood
the force of object lessons, and that to have even a suspicion against
his kindness, bred in the minds of the children would be exquisite pain
to him.
"You know that I wouldn't like that, Sister Halsey; but when you come to
think of it you'll see that it wouldn't serve your turn neither. It
would only need for a few of us to say you was crazy and the whole town
'ud see the more reason for not letting you go. Moreover, it would be a
monstrous injustice to me. When have I failed to do anything that I ever
promised you? Did I ever promise to let you apostatise? I guess, Sister
Halsey, that you're excited, and if you just think over things for a day
or two you would see that we're not so bad as you think. But, anyway,
this ain't just the place for us to have a talk together."
When Smith moved on to lead her back to her own rooms, she followed
quietly until they stood together in her parlour, the scene of their
last quarrel.
"And now," said Susannah, "you understand very well that it is no sudden
intention of mine to go, that it is my irrevocable decision. I have this
morning had my very life threatened; and I see now that unless you
command that it should be respected I should very possibly be in danger
if I went away alone. You have offered again and again to drive me in
your carriage; I will accept the offer now. Get out your own horses, and
drive me yourself to Carthage."
She saw a look of faint pleasure steal over his face. He liked to stand
there in the quiet room listening while she spoke with some evidence of
trust. The pleasure faded into embarrassment, but she had seen it.
"You have a good and a bad nature struggling within you, Mr. Smith. By
all that we have suffered, you and I, since the day that by some
mysterious power you forced me to come to your baptism" (she stammered
in her eagerness), "by all that we have suffered, by that sympathy which
we have at times felt for one another, assert yourself now. Do this one
right thing for me, and in all the future I will try to remember only
the good in your life and not the bad."
But he stood so long still looking steadfastly before him that she began
to fear that, unnerved by his last night's fit of fury, he was ready to
pass into one of those visionary trances which had been common in his
younger days.
She touched the sleeve of his coat. "I do not know if Mr. Heber's threat
could be serious, but it frightened me, and I know that I shall be safe
on the road to Carthage if you take me. Go, get your horses and take me
away yourself."
He looked at her pitifully, slipping into the style of his religious
moods. "Thou sayest truly, sister, that there is none but I who could do
this thing, for since in mine anger last night, fearing that I had no
strength of my own to keep thee by me, I denounced thee to the council,
there is no safety for thy life beyond the boundary of Nauvoo." He
winced here, as if seeing what he suggested.
Noting how the idea of her violent death wrung his heart, she went on
pleading with him. She quoted the exalted character of his early
visions, reminding him of the hour when the angel had shown him the dark
furnace of temptations through which he must pass. At this he was
visibly stirred; the angelic vision of warning seemed to be again before
his eyes. He roused himself, speaking in that tone of voice in which,
when he rarely used it, she recognised his best spirit. "Sister, thou
hast always been to me as Isaac to Abraham; for in the beginning when I
was poor and alone and had nought in the world save the revelation which
the Lord had given, and was tempted to doubt, then I saw thee and prayed
that thou shouldst be given me for a sign; and behold when I put forth
my whole strength to desire thee, thou didst come as a moth to the
light, burning thy beautiful wings of youth and joy. But I said, 'It is
well, for that which she has lost shall be restored to her with usury,'
and I knew in my heart that our brother Angel Halsey would not live
long, and that thou wouldst forget thy sorrow for him. But I swear unto
thee that thou hast never been to me as other women, but, as I said unto
thee just now, like the voice of the angel."
She never knew how far he was entirely under his own control when the
tendency to a state of trance was upon him, but she was anxious to take
advantage of the better mood.
She said, "And now what is required of you is that you should give me
up. No blessing" (she spoke strongly), "no blessing can come to you or
to your people until you do this one right thing."
He was again looking not at her but at the blank space of the shadowed
wall, and as if the wall was not there and his look went far beyond it.
"You have loosened the bloodhounds and set them on my track," she cried.
He did not speak.
"You--you alone will be guilty of my murder, for, I tell you, if you do
not take me, I will go alone and meet my death."
His head sank upon his breast with a groan such as a dumb creature in
the utmost pain might give. Almost immediately, to her surprise, he went
out.
She was left alone. She was under the impression that Smith had gone to
do her bidding, but she could not be sure. No faith in angelic vision,
no spell of psychic warfare, relieved the situation for her. The
external evidences of some crisis which he had undergone only produced
in her repulsion. Now, as ever since the temporary delusion that
accompanied her baptism, Susannah endeavoured to possess her soul free
from that sense of touch with mysterious powers which had worked such
havoc with the sanity of the members of this sect.
From the window she saw the prophet crossing the road in the direction
of his stables. He went, it was true, with slow, dreamy gait, but
steadily. Strange mixture that he was of sanity and shrewdness,
mysticism and grosser evil, he was at that moment her only star of hope.
She paced the room unable to forecast the happenings of the next hour,
yet supposing that her very life depended upon its content. The sudden
joy that had come to her this morning joined with her fear, and produced
panic of heart.
She computed the time it might take to harness the gay steeds, and tried
to give the rein of her expectation the utmost length. To her delight
she saw the prophet's horses and the light vehicle he drove upon long
journeys emerge into the square. A servant led them up and down. At
length she saw Smith returning, not with hasty steps, but as if against
his will, walking again through the crowded place like a man in a dream.
Men greeted him, but for once he gave no sign of seeing them. She heard
his footstep on the stair. When he reached her door he almost fell
against it in the opening, and staggered as he entered the room as if
his self-control had just lasted so far. He knelt down by one of the
fashionable marble-topped tables with which he had graced her room, and,
like an ill-conditioned soul, burst into tears and broken complaints.
"But I cannot do it," he gasped. "I cannot."
In her hour of miserable waiting Susannah had thought of many things
that might occur, and nerved herself to meet them, but this distemper of
soul, this failure of will in the man who had been undaunted through
years of persecuting torture, was so wholly unexpected that she stood
aghast.
He clenched his hands as they lay helpless on the white table. "O Lord!"
he cried, and she could not tell from the tone whether the words were
oath or prayer. "O Lord, I cannot let her go." His thick tears muffled
his voice, and still again and again during the paroxysm she caught the
words as if reiterated in choking anger, "O Lord, I cannot."
His tears, however evil their source, laid hold of her woman's
sensibility; she was no longer a critical observer. She no longer set
aside his strange inward conflict as a delusion of madness. She
participated in his consciousness so far as to think that she was
actually witnessing the despair of a soul repulsing an opportunity of
righteousness, and yet not so far dead as not to know its worth. She
tried to speak, but found herself, as at other times, so affected by
his overlapping emotion that she was trembling and had neither courage
nor voice.
Smith lifted his head, looking with terror into vacant spaces of the dim
room, as if following with his eyes some menacing form. He whined
piteously. "I have purposed to be faithful"; he put up his hand as if to
ward off a blow. "Thou knowest! thou knowest!" His voice was like a
whispering shriek. The terror of his face and gestures was appalling to
see.
Susannah was infected with fear of an apparition so evidently visible to
him. Her mind swung, as it were, out of material limitations. She was
overcome with the belief that a third person was with them, and her
heart went out in gratitude to that mysterious other for taking her
part.
But the gilt clock on the marble mantelshelf ticked on; Susannah felt
herself aware that the person of Smith's vision was withdrawing,
repulsed. She almost cried aloud to the invisible, but checked the
prayer, holding on, as it were, to her own sanity with both hands. Smith
writhed continually, moaning.
When at length she succeeded in telling him faintly that if he refused
this opportunity he must fall lower and lower and lose even the desire
for good, she found that her words had no longer any power to influence.
He had passed beyond into some region of outer darkness, where the
things of sense did not seem to penetrate, and where, if the actions of
his body were the expression of his soul, there was literally "wailing
and gnashing of teeth."
But Susannah hovered over him, not so much angry as pitiful, her own
agony of mere physical sympathy increasing. Terrified to be near him,
too compassionate to withdraw, she watched till at last the veins in his
hands and his face became swollen and knotted. She was unwilling to lose
the hope of her sole influence over him, and yet was about to call for
help, when almost suddenly he seemed to become conscious of his
surroundings again and shake himself free from the distress.
In a little while he was sitting on one of the chairs, wiping his purple
face and swollen eyes with the large silken pocket-handkerchief that was
one of the signs of his recent opulence. She saw the large ring on his
swollen finger gradually loosen, and the hand return to its normal shape
and colour. She felt convinced that his pulses had gone back to their
common flow, because his whole volition had returned peacefully to its
low ambitions and self-indulgence. She knew instinctively that it was
not thus opulent and fierce that he would have looked had he come out on
the other side of his temptation. She stood, outwardly patient, waiting
helpless till he should speak.
"Sit down, sister," he panted condescendingly. He was fanning himself
with the handkerchief now, as a man might who felt injured by undue
heat in the atmosphere.
Her refusal was concise and severe.
He looked at her boldly, with no apprehension now in his eyes, not even
the former conciliatory desire to receive her with fair words. She felt
appalled. Could it be that his angel in deserting him had deserted her?
Was there a devil strong enough to give her to him? It was perhaps only
his belief which overshadowed hers, it was perhaps only, as she thought,
a sickness of nerve but the impression that unseen personalities had
been contending here was stronger upon her even than her anger and fear.
Smith got up and went to the window. His horses and buggy were still
parading.
"I guess I've changed my mind," he said. He did not care, it seemed, to
delude her, but he must still deceive himself. "I couldn't go against
the voice of the church council to that extent; it wouldn't be safe for
you or me; and besides, 'tisn't the Lord's will that you should go."
She recoiled, looking at him in steady reproach.
"Well, as I said before, I guess you can think it over for a few days."
This was his easy answer to her look, and he went out, slamming the
door.
CHAPTER V.
When that day began to wane Susannah was still sitting in the empty
curtained room. No plan which offered even a fair hope of escape had
occurred to her mind. Although in pictures of adventure her imagination
had been fertile, throwing out suggestions unbidden, her judgment would
have none of them. No one disturbed her. She was left in isolation, a
prey to dismal thoughts.
She saw the happy crowds dispersing in the Square from evening
recreation. There was nothing to hinder her from joining them. Sometimes
her sense of imprisonment seemed only a morbid dream, for on all sides
of the fair white city there was open ingress and egress for the
faithful and the stranger. It was hard to believe that at wharfs and on
the high roads fanatics watched for her, and yet after Smith's reluctant
avowal she dare not doubt it.
She saw evening fade over the broad semi-circle of the river, over the
multitude of cheerful homes that sloped to its edge. When darkness came
she found herself more than ever pressed and tormented by the grim
shapes of fear and remorse and despair. She had terrible reason to
fear, and felt as never before that she had brought this horrid
situation upon herself by joining and rejoining the prophet's following.
She had no hope now that Smith would relent.
Beyond the city, eastward toward the sun-rising, lay the home of
Ephraim's friendship, whither in the morning she had thought to bend her
steps. She saw it through the glad glamour of her recent knowledge that
he had not neglected her letters. All her desires fled to this thought
of his friendship, like birds flying home. All her fancies clustered
round it, like climbing flowers that caress and kiss the object they
enfold when some rude wind disturbs. Whenever she withdrew her mind from
its contemplation, the circumstances on which she looked were the more
revolting.
Ever since Smith left she had been more or less under the impression
that an unseen person there in that very room had contended with him.
Again and again she had swept it aside as an infectious madness that she
was catching from the fanatics about her, but it had recurred; and now
as, not caring to light her lamps, she sat alone in the darkness by the
very table against which Smith had writhed and wailed, she felt pressed
upon by a spiritual life external to her own.
Within her soul from some unknown depth the word arose distinctly as if
spoken, "Pray. You cannot save yourself. Pray."
"I am going mad." Susannah whispered the words audibly. It was a
comfort to her even to hear her own voice. But when her whisper was past
she again listened involuntarily.
The words within her rose again. "Even so. Pray. If you are going mad,
you have the more need."
Susannah had come to class all search for definite and material answer
to prayer as one of the superstitions of false religion. In this
category stood also the hearing of voices and obedience to monitions
from the unseen. Now she reproached herself because she could not
immediately silence this fancy of disturbed nerves.
Long sad thoughts of all her reasons against prayer, strongest among
them the futility of her husband's prayers, passed through her mind with
their train of haunting memories, but in the cessation from argument
which these pictures of the past produced, the words arose again dearly
within her soul, like airdrops rising from the depths of a well and
expanding into momentary iridescence on the surface, "Pray for help. If
you have no faith in God's arm, you have the more need to seek it."
Stung by the fear that she was losing her mind, she rose as she would
have faced a human antagonist.
"God's arm!" she said aloud, "my husband prayed such prayers, but I will
ask nothing till I see his request fulfilled."
She spoke the quick words with an almost reckless sense of experiment.
Her thought was that before she could honestly think of such prayer she
must see some fruit of Angel's petitions for this man Smith and for her
own safety.
"Save Smith from further degradation," she said, her breath coming
sharply. "Save me now, if that sort of prayer is right. Do this in
answer to my husband's prayers. Remember his prayers."
She had begun recklessly, supposing that she was contending only with
her own sick fancy; she was astonished that a few swift moments had
involved her in an increasing sense of personal contact, and she became
awed by the strength of the encounter.
"My husband prayed for my safety," she repeated with softened attitude;
then, as if seeking for the protection which had died with him, she
repeated again and again, "Remember his prayers."
She left the challenge at last apparently to die where she had breathed
it in the dark cold air of her lonely room. The tension of her mind
relaxed.
She sat down again, not knowing whether anything had occurred, but a
crisis in the morbid working of her strained nerves had in some way
relieved her.
She was curiously unable to go back to her former agonised anxieties.
Natural fatigue, even sleepiness, came over her, but not her fears,
even though she wooed them.
"Ah, well," she said within herself, "it is quite true that it is
useless to consider when I can give myself no help."
The habits of the Saints were early. When she heard silence fall upon
the great house she went into her sleeping-room and lay down upon the
bed. Sleep came quickly.
With the early dawn she opened her eyes. In the first moments of
half-awaked consciousness she was aware that one thought lay alone in
the empty horizon of her mind, like a trace left by a dream that had
passed, as a wisp of cloud may be left in an empty sky.
This thought was that she would at once go down to the river bank upon
the southwest of the town.
When other thoughts awoke and crowded within her ken this thought
appeared foolish, and still more so the strong influence it had left
upon her will, for in the momentum of this influence she had risen
without debating the point.
She was not aware that she had moved in her sleep or dreamed. She was
greatly refreshed and again unreasonably light-hearted. She opened her
shutters and saw that the dawn was calm and fair. As yet the sleeping
town had scarcely stirred.
"It is better to go out than to stay in," she said to herself as she
remembered that this hour would be her one chance of taking air and
exercise unobserved. She heard the main door of the house open and,
looking over the banister, saw a slattern with bucket and mop passing
into some back passage. She went lightly down and out into the fresh
frosty air.
What had that dream been concerning the river bank on the south-western
side? She could not recall it, nor had she ever explored the streets of
white wooden villas and cottages that lay upon that side. She went
thither now. There was no reason why she should not go, no reason to go
elsewhere. It was a pleasant walk. When she had passed the last house,
the bank sloped in open uncared-for grass where cows were grazing. Only
here and there she had seen a house-door open, and as yet in this place
no one was abroad except a boy who was playing idly in a boat, which was
drawn half up on the muddy bank.
The broad river, milk-white under a dappled sky, stretched south and
west. The other side was dim and blue in the faint vapour of the
relaxing frost. The air was sweet and still. The sunbeams, imprisoned in
eastern vapour, shone through the white veil with soft glow that cast no
shadow but comforted the earth with hope.
Susannah had a further thought in her mind now, but she felt no haste or
impatience of excitement.
The boy was of an active, restless disposition or he would hardly have
been out so early. Lithe and idle, he sat see-sawing in the floating
end of the boat, uncertain how to amuse himself. He returned Susannah's
greeting with a lively flow of talk.
"You don't know how to row," said Susannah.
She showed no eagerness, for she felt none. The hope she had just formed
was most uncertain, for it appeared not at all likely that she could
escape in this way without being molested.
"I bet I can row," said the boy, "as well as any man in town."
"That isn't saying much," said Susannah. "The men about here have very
few boats, and they are most of them afraid to go on anything smaller
than the steamer."
"I could row t'other side and back," bragged the boy. "I could row
t'other side and back three times in the day."
"You couldn't."
"I couldn't! What will you bet?"
"I suppose your father wouldn't allow you to go, anyway."
He was a fresh-faced, mischievous, eager young rascal, and he found
Susannah's manner pleasant and provoking.
"Will you lay five dollars on it?" he cried. "Pap is away down to
Quincy. If you'll lay five dollars on it I'll do it."
"But I won't."
The gambling spirit of the young pioneer was aroused.
"What will you lay on it, then?"
"I don't believe you could row once to the other side."
He bragged loudly and with much exaggeration of what he had done and
what he could do, and began pushing off the boat to show her his speed.
The boat was a rude craft, unpainted, flat-bottomed, but light enough,
and not badly formed for speed. Susannah stepped into it without much
hope, scarcely caring what she did, but still provoking the young
boatman to attempt the crossing.
"I shan't give you any money," she said, "but you can row me a bit if
you like till I see how fast you can go. You don't understand the
currents, I am sure."
"Currents!" said the boy, "I guess I understand all there is to know
about them."
Talking thus in light banter, they actually proceeded out onto the bosom
of the milky flood without hearing any cry from the shore or seeing any
one who took note of their departure. The pellucid and comforting light
of the blinded sun grew warmer; the hum of industry in the town behind
rose cheerfully upon the quiet air, and as the calling of the April
bluebird in the fields grew more faint, the splash of the oars and the
whirr of the gray water-fowl began to be accompanied by a low distant
sound as of a watermill.
"It's the excursion steamer," said the boy. "We'll get in her waves and
you'll be scared. Ladies is always scared of waves."
She asked if the steam-boat would stop at the Nauvoo wharf, but he
explained, with the knowledge that boys are apt to have of such details,
that this steamer was coming from Fort Madison, and would keep to the
Missouri side, that he had heard that there were some State officials on
board her, escorting the Governor of Kentucky, who was prospecting for a
Land Company.
They saw the white hulk of the steam-boat looming upon the water to the
north. Her side paddle-wheels churned the flood. A strong purpose took
possession of Susannah; she knew what she was going to do.
She said to the boy, "No one could stop a steamer when she once starts
until she gets to her next port."
"I bet the engineman could stop her just as easy as that." The boy
backed water with his oars suddenly.
"But no one on the river could make him stop and get aboard."
"Yes, they could. My pap stopped one once. We was living down near
Cairo, but not near a wharf."
"How did he do it?" she asked, and her interest was intense.
"Why, you just put up your hands like a trumpet and yell through them as
loud as you can, and you go on waving and hollering. My pap said the
best plan was to call out 'Runaway nigger! Large reward!' They'd be sure
to stop then to know all about it, and when they'd once stopped they
don't mind your clambering up, if you can pay the fare."
Susannah felt herself wholly unequal to the loud task described.
"They would never stop for you," she, said. "You are only a boy, and
they would know 'twas only mischief."
His reply was as before. He would lay five dollars on it that he could
stop the boat.
She incited him to do this thing also. What faculty of caution the boy
possessed was not as yet developed; he left the care for consequences to
the sedate lady in the stern, and forgetting his quest of the Missouri
shore, lay in the path of the steam-boat and howled unmusically, and
marred the peace of the placid morning by shouting concerning a runaway
slave and a fabulous reward that was offered for him taken alive or
dead.
It is probable that what he said never rightly reached the ears of the
men on the deck, but that they regarded the lady as a possible
passenger; the engine was stopped.
"We'd better cut now as fast as we can," said the boy, somewhat
frightened. He seized his oars excitedly. "Or shall I tell them a big
yarn about the nigger?"
They were but slightly to one side. The prow of the steam-boat, which
drew but little water, had already passed below them. A small crowd on
the vessel's deck leaned over the paddle-box. Standing up in the boat,
Susannah searched the faces of the men looking down. They all looked at
her.
She singled out the captain by some sign in his dress, and pleaded
urgent necessity for travelling with him.
"Look here," said the boy, looking up at her from beneath, "I call that
a low-down, mean sort of thing to do. Why didn't you tell me square? I'd
have brought you if you wanted do come."
She pleaded with the boy too. "It was better for you not to know my
secrets. If they ask you in the city you can say that you didn't know."
A dozen hands were held out to help her to climb the ladder on the
shelving paddle-box. "Keep off," they cried to the boy, and he swung
away from the churning wheel.
Susannah stood upon the deck pale and trembling. The magnitude of the
step came upon her, and she was beset by natural timidity and the
painfulness of her dependence. The men who stood around her with the
right to question were not of a low class. The captain, brawny and
respectable, spoke for the group. Behind him was a short but dignified
gray-haired gentleman whom she took to be the present or former Governor
of the State of Kentucky, of whom the boy had spoken. With him were
several men who appeared to have some fair title to gentility. Other
passengers pressed in an outer circle.
She would fain have explained herself more privately, but she could not
endure to accept the privileges of the boat without explaining first
that she was not able to pay for them. "Gentlemen, I have no money. I am
entirely unprotected. I have escaped in fear of my life from Nauvoo."
She spoke instinctively, only desiring to set herself right, but when
the words were said she knew that she had helped to heap opprobrium on
the sect in whose cause so short a time ago she would have died. The
passengers were Missourians, as was the captain. Among them went a
whisper of chivalrous pity for her and of execration for the prophet and
his followers.
"Madam," said the captain, "any lady as is escaping from those devils
has the freedom of this boat, and no ticket required, as long as I'm in
command. Isn't that so?" he asked of the crowd.
The murmur broke into an open chorus of enthusiastic speech.
Wild and deep as was her panting anger against Smith's oppression,
Susannah shrank. The thought of profiting by this spirit of partisan
hatred scorched her heart.
The Kentucky Governor, a dapper man, who had been regarding her with a
temperate and critical eye, now, urged by her obvious distressed
timidity, came forward.
"How did you get among the Mormons, may I ask?"
"My husband," faltered Susannah, "but he is dead."
It would appear that her words tallied with some conclusion he had been
drawing concerning her, for without further parley Susannah found
herself being led in a formal manner down the companion-way. The brief
report which she had given of herself had preceded her through the boat.
She heard the passengers whom she left on the deck making sentimental
remarks. Two coloured girls who were washing dishes in a pantry came to
its door and gasped with emotion as they stared at her. In the saloon
the coloured waiters gaped.
At the farther end of the saloon a stout and magnificent lady in silk
and diamonds was seated before innumerable viands which were spread in
circles around her plate. She stopped eating while her husband presented
Susannah. She alone of all upon the boat seemed to be overburdened by no
surge of sentiment or curiosity. She was a most comfortable person.
Seated in safety beside her, Susannah could indulge the pent-up
indignation of her outraged spirit in silent musings upon Smith's
degradation and, the certain downfall of all righteousness under the new
tyranny. And yet--and yet--the shock of the last few days, forcibly as
it vibrated through all her nature, could not eradicate the sympathy of
years--the memories of Hiram and Kirtland, Haun's Mill and the
desperate winter's march. Justice, her old friend, now her inquisitor,
said sternly, "It was in these scenes in which some lost life and some
reason that these men lost their moral standards." But her heart cried,
"Now that _I_ am insulted, I cannot forgive."
The words of the Governor's wife, cheerful, continuous, and not without
diverting sparkle, were an unspeakable rest to Susannah, weary above all
things of herself. Whether because of a strong undercurrent of tactful
kindness, or in mere garrulity, the good lady's talk for some time
flowed on concerning all things small, and nothing great, like the
lapping of the river against the vessel's bows.
But at last her companion's situation grew upon her; she enlarged more
than once upon her surprise at Susannah's advent, and her feelings of
extreme relief that she was safely there.
"What a mercy!" she sighed comfortably. "Such awful people! Why, I hear
that when any child among them is weak or deformed they just murder it."
Like one who is enraged with his own kin but cannot hear them falsely
accused, Susannah contradicted this statement.
"It is perfectly true," the Governor's wife declared. "I have heard it
several times. How long have you been at Nauvoo?"
"Three weeks."
"And in that time they offered to kill you! Well, I assure you if you
had been a sickly child they wouldn't have let you live three days. And
they say that that monster they call the prophet has at least a dozen
wives."
"Oh, no."
"Ten or eleven, at any rate."
"He has only one, and he has always been very kind to her."
"How they have imposed upon you! Where have you been living that you
have not heard more of their iniquitous doings than that?"
Susannah was faint and ill with the conflict within her own breast when
the dapper Kentucky Governor, on business intent, came to them from a
group of the smoking men.
"James," cried his wife, with an edge of sharpness in her low voice,
"this lady doesn't even know a tithe of the enormities that are
practised in Nauvoo."
He shook his head, and said that it was a compliment to Susannah's heart
and mind that the tenth part had been sufficient to alarm.
His manner was stiff and formal, but his disposition seemed very kind.
He asked Susannah if the Mormons had retained all her property, and what
destination she now proposed for herself; and then with great delicacy
informed her that there was a proposition among the passengers to make
a collection, to defray the expenses of her whole journey.
Susannah's cheek paled again.
"How could I return it if it came from so many?" she asked. Her white
hands were clasping and unclasping themselves. Must it indeed be by
means of such humiliation that she saved herself from Angel's Church?
The Governor determined upon further generosity. "If you would prefer,
take it from me as a loan," he said.
She gave him Ephraim's address. It was so long since she had spoken her
cousin's name to any one that tears came when she felt herself bound to
explain that she was not certain that he was alive.
"He is probably alive. Ill news travels fast."
She blessed the dapper gentleman for this unfounded opinion, for the
kindness that prompted it, more than for all else that he had done.
His advice was that Susannah should continue upon that boat with them as
far south as Cairo, in order to take advantage of the steam-boats now
plying on the Ohio River, so that the expense and weariness of the land
journey would be diminished to the small space between the uppermost
point on the Ohio and the western entrance of the Erie Canal. There were
several men upon the boat, he said, who could commend her to the care of
every captain on the Ohio.
Susannah felt too weak and weary to say more in defence of the morals of
Nauvoo. She could not struggle against the fact that her claim to the
generosity of which she stood in such helpless need was recognised and
satisfied by the hatred of these Gentiles.
When in the succeeding days she had time to meditate, while she spent
many a long hour on the decks of river-boats watching the shimmering
lights and shades that pass upon open river surfaces, the perplexing and
contrasting aspects of her situation played in like manner upon her
heart.
She had suffered so much, such long and deadly ill, as a member of this
almost innocent sect, suffered bravely in protest against the vile
injustice of the persecution, and now that she was escaping from
miseries inflicted by this same sect, she was wrapped in the kindly
reverse side of the persecuting spirit, and carried home in it, with all
the deference that would be accorded to a lost child. She was too tired
and helpless now to defy the good thus given. Did all her former
suffering go for nothing as a protest against the wrong?
With more curious feelings, more involved sentiments, she regarded the
history of her more inward life. With what strong protest against the
obvious evils attendant upon unreasoning faith had she resisted through
many years the infectious influences of belief in an interfering
spiritual world. Now she had defied Smith with a faith in the ideal
marriage unsupported by any conscious reason, and when she had looked
to the interference of Providence, not even in meekness, but in
desperate challenge, she had strong impression of being encompassed by
invisible power and protection. In vain she said to herself that the
simple and unlooked-for method of her escape was one of those
coincidences which only appear to support faith, that her deliverance
had been of no unearthly sort, but brought about by means doubtfully
righteous--consent to trick the boy and to say little on hearing the
Mormons falsely accused. When she had told herself this, the impression
that underneath her folly a guiding hand had impelled and saved her, in
spite of her small marring of the work, remained. Even while her bosom
was swelling with shame at hearing her husband's sect derided, and
eating the bread of that derision, and still greater shame at knowing
that condemnation was merited, she would find herself resting in the
assurance that beyond and beneath all this confusion of pain there was
for her and for all men an eternal and beneficent purpose.
CHAPTER VI.
Susannah left the canal boat at Rochester. She had borrowed as small a
sum as might be, and was now penniless, possessing only her travel-worn
garments; she had no choice but to start toward Manchester on foot. Food
was easily to be had; such a woman as Susannah had but to enter any
house and state her need. She got a long lift on her way from a farmer
driving to Canandaigua. Of the farmer she asked, while her pulses almost
stopped, some information about Ephraim.
"He's kep up the place to a wonderful degree like his father," said the
farmer.
From this she gathered that Ephraim was alive and in better health.
She asked no more; her lips refused to form his name again.
"The old lady, she was took off with a stroke; she and the old gentleman
is laying together in the graveyard." The farmer volunteered this
information, and Susannah, who had nerved herself to meet Ephraim's
mother with humility, now wept for her loss.
From the town of Canandaigua she walked beside the winding river and
entered Manchester from the west at the hour when the May dusk was
melting into moonlight.
The public road, then as now, was lined with elms and many an
apple-tree. The dusk of the elm branches was flecked with half-grown
fluttering leaves, and the outline of the apple branches was heavy with
blossom. The air was sweet in the shade of the night-folded petals, the
perfume bringing involuntarily the thought of the hum of bees which had
gone to rest. There were some new houses on the road, but the tide of
progress had here ebbed, leaving the once ambitious village like a rock
pool, beautified only by those ornaments of nature which thrive in
stillness. There was more on the road of gable and shrub and tree which
was familiar than of objects strange to her eye. The few people who were
abroad gave her scarcely a glance, the half light veiling all that was
foreign in her garb. The round moon hung above the willows of the river.
When she came in sight of the white Baptist meeting-house she scanned
its homely appearance as one looks at the face of an old friend. The
yellow light within was put out as she approached. Out of the door a
group of men were issuing as if from some evening service.
What vivid memories the scene brought her!--memories of her uncle
singing psalms with slow and solemn demeanour, of her aunt's high and
more emotional voice, of the pew in which as a girl she had sat between
them, listless and impatient, wondering at times why Ephraim remained at
home.
Her uncle and aunt were now lying in the graveyard. She paused a moment
at the thought, looking at the small host of modest headstones
surrounded by wild-flowers and half-fledged shrubs. It has never been
the custom in Manchester to cultivate God's acre. Above, the branches of
the nut-trees stretched themselves in the sweet spring air--they too
were just leafing.
Standing by the low, unpainted rail, Susannah wondered in what part of
the yard her aunt and uncle lay.
She observed that the small coterie of deacons had passed on to the road
and dispersed, leaving only one of their number, who was locking the
main door with an air of responsibility. Susannah did not look twice;
she knew that this man was Ephraim. He stooped slightly to fit the key
in the lock; then, evidently having forgotten something, pushed the door
again and went inside.
Susannah did not wait; she went up the graveyard path and in where the
great square windows cast each a strip of light athwart the dark pews.
Ephraim turned from his errand and met her in the aisle.
"Ephraim."
Ephraim Croom fell back a step or two, as if his breath was set too
quick by joy or fear.
Susannah could not speak again.
At length Ephraim stretched out his hands and grasped her arms gently,
then more strongly, making sure that she was not a trick of light and
shade. Then, not knowing at all what he did, he clasped her in sudden
haste to his breast.
Susannah felt his arms wrap about her as if she had been a little child.
She had never felt, never conceived, of closeness and tenderness like
this. Ephraim, his breast heaving and his arms folding closer and
closer, was out of himself. There was no conscious meaning expressed by
him, but she knew, knew at once without shadow of doubt that he himself
had been the dreamer of whom he wrote to her, who had learned so much by
yielding all the loves of his heart to one, and that she was that woman.
It was a long moment; at last, as if waking from a dream, Ephraim
relinquished his hold. He leaned against the side of a pew, and his
eager look seemed to hold and fold her still. In the dim light she could
not see his eye, but she felt the delight of his glance falling upon
her, a brighter, softer influence than the mantle of the moonlight.
She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder with a motherly touch.
"I have startled you, dear Ephraim; I hope I have done you no harm."
He made as yet no answer but to take her hand, grasping it with rough
heartiness as if this was the first moment of their meeting.
Susannah laughed as women sometimes laugh over their cherished ones for
very joy, not amusement. "Speak to me," she coaxed. "I have come back to
you. Do you think we are in a dream?" She let herself kneel on the old
floor of the old aisle, and, clasping both his hands, laid them against
her cheek.
With his returning self, something of his habitual formality of manner
would have returned had she remained in any common attitude, but to this
coaxing, kneeling queen Ephraim (although his whole life had passed
without caresses) could not behave with reticence.
One thing he did not do. He did not hint that it was unseemly that she
should kneel at his feet. Chivalry was the very substance of the soul of
this son of New England, and no outward seeming could disturb his serene
reverence for the woman he loved. He stooped over her, now stroking her
hair, how holding her hands close against his heart, now whispering
words that in their audible passion were new and strange to his
unaccustomed lips.
"I am all alone, Ephraim. I have no money, no clothes. I have walked
most of the way from Rochester to-day."
"Are you very tired?"--as if the fact that she had been walking that day
was all that needed his immediate attention.
"I was forced to come suddenly. I only escaped with my life. But I have
long been wearying to come to you, for since my husband and the child
died I have been quite alone."
"We heard that they were dead, but that was long ago." There was no tone
of reproach in his voice, only curiosity. "You never wrote, and I--I
supposed that if you were alive you--you preferred to remain, Susy."
She did not enter into explanation then. After a while, when he had
raised her to her feet and embraced her again, she whispered, "Why are
you in the meeting-house, Ephraim?"
"We have been having a prayer meeting," he answered. "And I keep the key
because--because my father used to." He gave the reason with an
intonation half playful. "I do many a thing now because he did."
"I thought that you at least would never become like the others. Are
they less foolish" (she made a gesture toward the pews to denote their
late inmates), "less unjust than they used to be?"
As they went toward the Croom homestead he answered her words in his
manner of meditative good-humour which she knew so well. "I don't know
that they are less unjust and less foolish than they used to be, or that
I am either, Susy, but--it is not good to worship God alone."
She pressed close to his side and looked up through the honied blossom
of the apple-boughs; the violet gulfs of heaven seemed to be made more
homelike by his tones.
"The sun, they say, is ninety-three millions of miles away from the
earth's surface, Susy; and think you that if some of us climb the
mountains we are much nearer light than those in the vales?"
She remembered sentences which she had conned from his letters which ran
like this, and her thought on its way was arrested for a moment by the
memory of the spot where she had lost those letters, the thought of the
grave by the creek at Haun's Mill and of her husband's steadfast faith.
So they walked in silence, but as they stood by the garden gate under
the quince tree, she detained him a moment with a child's desire to hear
a story that she knew by heart.
"Ephraim, you wrote once that you knew a man who loved--"
When he had given the answer she wanted, they went up the little brick
path, and Susannah noticed that the folded tulips and waxen hyacinths
flanked it in orderly ranks. Their light forms glimmered in the branch
shadows of the budding quince. It was true, what people said, that
Ephraim had not let his father's home decay. The door stood open, as
country doors are apt to do.
There was a lack of something in the dark appointments of the
sitting-room. The traces of busy domestic life were not there, and
sadness filled the place of the parents whom she had unfeignedly longed
to see again. Through a door ajar she saw light in the large kitchens. A
candle was upon a table, and an old woman, unknown to her, sat sewing
beside it. Ephraim, holding a burning match in clumsy fingers, lit a
student lamp--the fire of a new hearth.
CHAPTER VII.
Two years after that, Ephraim, returning one day from the field, brought
with him a poor wayfarer whom he had met upon the road.
The stranger was of middle age, with hair already gray and face deeply
furrowed. In ragged garments, resting his bandaged feet, he sat propped
in the sitting-room. The warm air blowing from rich harvest fields came
in at open door and windows. Attentive before him, Ephraim and Susannah
sat.
"You are one of the Latter-Day Saints?" Susannah asked.
"I am, ma'am, and it's real strange to hear you say them words, for it's
'Mormons' the Gentiles calls us."
Then to her questioning he told the story of the downfall of Nauvoo.
"There was two causes for the persecution; we had got too powerful and
too great for the folks in Illinois, just as we had done in Missouri;
but there was another thing, and that was that wickedness crept in
amongst us. 'Twasn't as bad as was reported, though, but 'twas
there--I'm afraid 'twas there."
The man sighed.
"It's twelve years now since I joined the Saints in Missouri and when we
were driven out there I went with them to Illinois; and I can never
believe other but that the Latter-Day Saints has the truth, for the
power of it is always to be seen among them; and now that I've lost
everything a second time, and know that I have a sickness that I'll
never get the better of, I have come east to see my folks once more and
to testify to them of the truth."
He was going on into Vermont, passing by that way that he might refresh
his eyes with a view of the sacred hill, and had only remained at
Ephraim's request to relate his tidings to Susannah.
"After coming out of Missouri I never lived at Nauvoo. I had a farm
midways, between Nauvoo and Quincy. As near as I can make out, the
scandal they've got agen us, which they've always had agen us because of
the wickedness of the Gentile mind, began to have some truth in it when
Rigdon came out with his teaching concerning the nonsense of spiritual
wives, which wasn't new with him, for I hear that it's held among all
the folks as call themselves 'Perfectionists.' Well, our prophet made
pretty quick work of that doctrine, and he rebuked Rigdon in public and
private, and packed him out of the place, and no one can say that our
prophet has ever done otherwise with any one as has had notions about
marriage."
Susannah sighed. "I have heard that he has acted the same way in several
other instances."
"You have, ma'am? Well, it's strange, too, to hear a Gentile say a good
word for our prophet, but perhaps, as he came from here, ma'am, you may
be some relation of his; and I ask you, is it likely, as he's always
acted so severe in that matter, that he should have taught a false
doctrine himself? But even some of the Saints do say nowadays that he
was led away by some strange doctrines before he died; but, for my own
part, I believe that the tales have arisen from the sinful natures of
many of the men that he trusted; for he was too trustful, and there's
apostles and bishops and elders amongst us that are servants of hell.
There's been evil work since our prophet's martyrdom, for there's
thousands of our people now deluded by them and going out after Mr.
Brigham Young and his crew.
"You want to know how the prophet's death came about, and I can tell
you; for when my disease came on, and the doctor told me 'twas fatal, I
started to go up to Nauvoo to ask the prophet to lay his hands upon me
and heal me. But when I got there the city was all in a buzz, for the
cause that some of the elders had got out a paper accusing the prophet
of having a lot of ladies for wives. Well now, I can tell you how that
came about. When our prophet first got the charter for the Nauvoo Legion
there was a man called Bennet, who had been general in the American
army, and who was steeped in unbelief and ambition, and who came and
offered his services to the prophet, and was allowed to build up the
Nauvoo Legion. He was a most sinful man, and the prophet, he knew his
sinfulness, but thought that he ought to take any help to build up an
army to preserve his people from the fearful persecutions. Bennet got
hold of the worst side of the worst men we had in the Church, among
which was the new usurper." He paused here with ire in his eye. "I would
be understood to mean Mr. Brigham Young, who has falsely usurped the
prophet's place; but there are many of us who will not follow him, no,
not one step. The Lord will requite him and his confederates, and will
establish his true servants."
"I fear, my good friend," said Ephraim, "that although it is true that
the Lord will establish his true servants, it is also true that their
kingdom is not of this world."
"Well, sir, tramping along as I've done many a day, with no companion
but the disease that's prevailing against me, I've thought that that may
be true; but, whichever way it is, Bennet set himself to work iniquity,
and they say that when the prophet could endure him no longer and gave
him the sack, he had the vileness to dress himself up in the prophet's
clothes and go about in disguise, talking Sydney Rigdon's rank
spiritual-wife doctrine to the ladies and some of them were such fools
that they thought it was the prophet, and that he disguised his voice
and kept something over his face in order to work the iniquity in
secret. That's what a gentleman who knew very well about it told me. But
anyway, when Bennet was gone out he wrote awful things to the Gentile
newspapers concerning the domestic iniquities of Nauvoo; and he had his
own party in the sacred city, and they up and put their scandals in the
public print in the prophet's own city.
"But the prophet he rose up and shook himself, like Samson when his arms
were tied with the withes, and he denounced the wickedness, and went to
the house where the paper was published, and kicked the printing press
down himself, and burned the paper. And that day he preached most
powerful in the Nauvoo Temple."
"We heard that it was on account of the illegality of his action in the
printing office that the people of Illinois arrested him."
The stranger did not answer directly. His mind had passed on to scenes
which had stirred him more personally.
"I was in the city all the time. The Government of Illinois sent to
arrest Mr. Smith, but his people rallied round him, and said that in
consequence of the lawless persecutions that had passed in Missouri they
had a right to mistrust the justice of the State. They called out the
Nauvoo Legion, and sent back the constables that had come from
Carthage. That made the Gentiles terribly angry. The Illinois
militiamen went about saying openly that they would burn down the town
and kill every man, woman, and child in it. So then Governor Ford
himself advised our prophet to keep the Legion under arms, for he said
the Gentiles were so furious; but he asked the prophet to go to Carthage
and pledge himself to appear for the trial when it came on, for it was a
civil suit, and no harm could come to him and his. Governor Ford pledged
his honour as the Governor of the State.
"I had been waiting about the town until the prophet should be less
bothered before asking him to heal my sickness, but when I heard that he
was going away, then I misdoubted that it would be long before he came
back. I thought I'd make a push for it, so I went and hung round the
door of the prophet's house. I was only a poor man and I did not like to
go in, for the bishops and elders and all the grand folks were going in
and out all that day. I heard the things they said, and most of them
were saying that the prophet had had a vision, and that if he went to
Carthage he would never come back alive. They said too that if he
stayed, the town would be sacked, and I understood that they were asking
him to run away. Towards evening I saw a buggy draw up at the back door
of the hotel, and all the elders seemed to be holding a meeting, for
they were singing hymns; so then it just come to me that they were going
to get the prophet off, and I ran down the road to the ferry, for I
knew he would have to go that way. I waited in the boat, and the same
buggy came down to it, and a man with a cloak on and his hat over his
eyes came out and sat in the corner of the boat, and we all knew that it
was the prophet, and none of us durst speak to him. But I went over in
the boat, for I hoped I'd get up courage to ask him when we came to the
other side. When he stood on the shore he seemed like a man that didn't
know what to do, although there was horses there for him to take, and he
turned round and went off the road up on to a little hill; and I went
after him a bit of the way behind, and I came and found him just
standing looking at the city, for the river swept round two sides of it
so noble like, and blue as the sky above, and the city stood all white,
and the temple stood high in the middle, and all of it glistened in the
sun. The prophet had taken off his hat, and he stood with his hands
folded on the stick he carried, and he just looked and looked at the
city. I had never seen a man look like that but once before, and then it
was a man I knew whose wife died, and he looked at her face just
steadfast like that. I couldn't think to speak to him about myself just
then, although I'd got him alone, for my heart was just broke to see how
sad he looked, and him just in the prime of life; for it was his own
city, and the sound of all its work came over to us as we stood there,
and the thousands and thousands of happy homes in it belonged to his
own people.
"But when I moved a bit he saw me, and he started at first as if I'd
been going to shoot him, thinking no doubt that I was an enemy spying on
him. At that, because my disease had weakened me, and because I seemed
to feel nothing all through me but the grief that he was bearing, I
began to cry like a child.
"Then he stretched out his hands towards the city and I heard him say,
'My Lord, thou hast given me this people, and if I leave them without a
shepherd they will be stricken and scattered and robbed by the
destroyer.'
"So then in a few minutes he held out his hand to me, so gentlemanlike,
as if I was as good as him, and he said, 'Come, my friend, let us go
back, and let God determine what we shall do or suffer.' So we went and
got on the ferry-boat and went back, and I never spoke to him; but I
went with him all the way to his house.
"The next morning I heard that he and Mr. Hyrum were going to set off
for Carthage to be tried. So I got a horse and went to Carthage before
them, for I felt then that I cared for nothing but to see the prophet
again. But I heard tell how, as they went along, their wives and their
friends went with them part way, and they turned back two or three times
as they were parting from them, for the prophet said that they would
never see his face again.
"Governor Ford he met them at Carthage with a great to-do. He pledged
the honour of the State that they should be safe, and he had the troops
drawn upon either side, and he passed down between them with the prophet
and Mr. Hyrum and showed them himself into the gaol. The prophet said
that it was illegal to put them in the gaol, for it was a civil matter,
and Governor Ford said, for I heard him, that it was because they would
be safer there. I was standing just behind the line of soldiers jostling
up with the crowd, and I heard the Governor say, 'I pledge you my
honour, and the faith and honour of this State, that no harm shall come
to you while undergoing this imprisonment.' So then they were shut in;
but the crowd and the soldiers remained in the streets, and I heard
enough to know that harm would come.
"The next morning the Governor went away from Carthage, to be out of it,
and that day, in the afternoon, a mob of men with faces painted like
Indians came out with guns, and we knew that their purpose was to murder
the prophet. I went to the gaol and sat upon the steps, and the militia,
which was called the Carthage Greys, came out, and halted, about eight
rods from the gaol, and I thought at first that they would fire on the
mob when they came, but they never moved, but stood and looked on. So
the murder was done by them all in cold blood as well as by the mob."
"Did you see him die?" asked Susannah with white lips.
"If he was a relation of yours, ma'am, I can tell you that he died like
a man. First I thought that I would spend what little strength I had
left in fighting the mob at the door, and that they should not go in
except over my body; but the gaoler opened the door in pretence of
finding out what was the matter, for he was in the plot; so I thought
that I would run up and give warning. But by the time I got to the door
of the upper room where the prophet was, the mob was up behind me, so I
never rightly knew what I did, for they knocked me down just within the
room. There were four or five men with the prophet and Mr. Hyrum, and
these kept the mob back for a few minutes at the door, but a bullet hit
Mr. Hyrum in the head, and I saw the prophet leaning over him, and he
said in a voice that was very sad, 'My dear, dear brother!'
"Then the prophet stood up quite calmly and pulled out a pistol and shot
at the mob until all its barrels were discharged. His firing made the
men hold back, for a good number of the mob were struck. Then they came
on again until the door was literally full with muskets and rifles, but
I was lying on the floor below the shots, so I saw them pass over my
head. The very walls were riddled with them, and the prophet stood in
the midst of the shots and threw up his hands towards heaven and cried,
'O Lord, my God.' Then, not knowing what he did, he staggered to the
window, dying from his wounds, and he fell outside the window, and I
heard that the mob out there propped up his body and used it for a
target."
Susannah rose up with clenched hands and pitiful face, but she went out
of the room, leaving the two men together. "Were you injured?" asked
Ephraim of the stranger.
"Well, sir, I was bruised by being trampled on, but the gaoler got hold
of me and dragged me into an iron cell and locked me in, and the next
morning he came and let me out."
"That was a year ago," said Ephraim. "Have you been in Nauvoo since
then?"
"Yes, I went back. I wanted to know, sir, what would come, and take my
share of the suffering after seeing the prophet die so courageous; but,
sir, the Church is sorely divided. I didn't like to say it before your
lady, for I see that she's got some one she cares for amongst us, but
there's a strong party among the apostles and elders that are
worshippers of Baal, and are most evil in their conduct and practice,
and are apostate, though they call themselves followers of the prophet.
And Mr. Brigham Young is at the head of them. It's a bad thing that the
Illinois militia is set out to fight against us and turn us out of the
city without mercy, but it's a sorer thing that the greater part of our
people, being ignorant, will follow Mr. Brigham Young; and he's bent on
going west, sir, into the heart of the Rocky Mountains, where he can set
up a kingdom of his own. His teaching is against good doctrine in two
respects; he says that they will wax strong there until they can avenge
the blood of their brethren who have been hunted and slain, and that the
elders and apostles will live like the patriarchs of old, and have many
wives, in order to build up the Church."
"And has the other party in your sect no strength to resist?"
"Very little strength, sir, except that God is on the side of the
righteous; but Mrs. Smith, the prophet's widow, with his sons and many
hundreds of us, will not give in to the evil, but will stay in Illinois
and Missouri in face of the worst that persecution can do, for it was
thereabouts that the prophet said that the Holy City should be, and he
gave us no word to kill and destroy our fellow-men; and although perhaps
he was led away and sinned sometimes as other men do, it is a scandalous
lie to say that he thought to teach wickedness and falsehood to his
Church."
"I wonder," asked Ephraim within himself, "if that is true, or what
strange secret that troubled soul took with him to the other side of
death?"
In the evening after the stranger was gone Susannah sat with Ephraim in
the old doorway. Before them, mid the harvest fields, winding over hill
and dale, lay the long white road which led to the hill of Smith's early
visions--the road on which Susannah had set forth with Angel Halsey on
her wedding journey.
"You are a-weary, wife, to-night," said Ephraim. He smoothed the hair
upon her brow. "You have exhausted yourself with long weeping, and
yet--"
He did not say, "Have you reason to bemoan this man's tragic end?" for
he knew that more sacred memories had caused the tears; of these some
faint jealousy rose in his breast and kindness sealed his lips.
She told him the truth in very simple words such as loving women use.
"To-day I seemed to see" (she laid her hand across her knit brows) "all
the passion of it again, the wrong, the right, the misery--from the day
that Angel and I went out with such young passionate desire to divide
the right from the wrong. I could see Angel and my baby shot before my
eyes as Joseph Smith was shot. It is terrible to see death come that
way. But they are all three lying now in the perfect peace of death."
She put her hand in his. "Then, dear, my mind came back, from the rage
and terror of war. I thought of their peace and of you--how God has
healed my life by your love, and given me such joy. Is he not able to
provide for the healing of the nations?"
THE END.