_Giles Rae Beautifies His Inheritance_
By eight o'clock the next morning, out under a cloudy sky, the Raes were
ready and eager for their start to the new Jerusalem. Even the sick
woman's face wore a kind of soft and faded radiance in the excitement of
going. On her mattress, she had been tenderly installed in one of the
two covered wagons that carried their household goods. The wagon in
which she lay was to be taken across the river by Seth Wright,--for the
moment no Wild Ram of the Mountains, but a soft-cooing dove of peace.
Permission had been granted him by Brockman to recross the river on some
needful errands; and, having once proved the extreme sensitiveness, not
to say irritability, of those in temporary command, he was now resolved
to give as little eclat as possible to certain superior aspects of his
own sanctity. He spoke low and deferentially, and his mien was that of a
modest, retiring man who secretly thought ill of himself.
He mounted the wagon in which the sick woman lay, sat well back under
the bowed cover, clucked low to the horses, and drove off toward the
ferry. If discreet behaviour on his part could ensure it there would be
no conflict provoked with superior numbers; with numbers, moreover,
composed of violent-tempered and unprincipled persecutors who were
already acting with but the merest shadow of legal authority.
On the seat of the second wagon, whip in hand, was perched Giles Rae,
his coat buttoned warmly to the chin. He was slight and feeble to the
eye, yet he had been fired to new life by the certainty that now they
were to leave the territory of the persecuting Gentiles for a land to be
the Saints' very own. His son stood at the wheel, giving him final
directions. At the gate was Prudence Corson, gowned for travel, reticule
in hand, her prettiness shadowed, under the scoop of her bonnet, the toe
of one trim little boot meditatively rolling a pebble over the ground.
"Drive slowly, Daddy. Likely I shall overtake you before you reach the
ferry. I want but a word yet with Prudence; though"--he glanced over at
the bowed head of the girl--"no matter if I linger a little, since
Brother Seth will cross first and we must wait until the boat comes
back. Some of our people will be at the ferry to look after you,--and be
careful to have no words with any of the mob--no matter what insult they
may offer. You're feeling strong, aren't you?"
"Ay, laddie, that I am! Strong as an ox! The very thought of being free
out of this Babylon has exalted me in spirit and body. Think of it, boy!
Soon we shall be even beyond the limits of the United States--in a
foreign land out there to the west, where these bloodthirsty ones can no
longer reach us. Thank God they're like all snakes--they can't jump
beyond their own length!"
He leaned out of the wagon to shake a bloodless, trembling fist toward
the temple where the soldiers had made their barracks.
"Now let great and grievous judgments, desolations, by famine, sword,
and pestilence come upon you, generation of vipers!"
He cracked the whip, the horses took their load at his cheery call, and
as the wagon rolled away they heard him singing:--
"Lo, the Gentile chain is broken!
Freedom's banner waves on high!"
They watched him until the wagon swung around into the street that fell
away to the ferry. Then they faced each other, and he stepped to her
side as she leaned lightly on the gate.
"Prue, dear," he said, softly, "it's going hard with me. God must indeed
have a great work reserved for me to try me with such a sacrifice--so
much pain where I could least endure it. I prayed all the night to be
kept firm, for there are two ways open--one right and one wrong; but I
cannot sell my soul so early. That's why I wanted to say the last
good-bye out here. I was afraid to say it in there--I am so weak for
you, Prue--I ache so for you in all this trouble--why, if I could feel
your hands in my hair, I'd laugh at it all--I'm so _weak_ for you,
dearest."
She tossed her yellow head ever so slightly, and turned the scoop of her
bonnet a little away from his pain-lighted face.
"I am not complimented, though--you care more for your religion than for
me."
He looked at her hungrily.
"No, you are wrong there--I don't separate you at all--I couldn't--you
and my religion are one--but, if I must, I can love you in spirit as I
worship my God in spirit--"
"If it will satisfy you, very well!"
"My reward will come--I shall do a great work, I shall have a Witness
from the sky. Who am I that I should have thought to win a crown without
taking up a cross?"
"I am sorry for you."
"Oh, Prue, there must be a way to save the souls of such as you, even in
their blindness. Would God make a flower like you, only to let it be
lost? There must be a way. I shall pray until I force it from the secret
heavens."
"My soul will be very well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of
asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember--and when I'm a
wife I shall be my husband's only wife--"
He winced in acutest pain.
"You have no right to taunt me so. Else you can't know what you have
meant to me. Oh, you were all the world, child--you, of your own dear
self--you would have been all the wives in the world to me--there are
many, many of you, and all in a heavenly one--"
"Oh, forgive me, dearest," she cried, and put out a little gloved hand
to comfort him. "I know, I know--all the sweetness and goodness of your
love, believe me. See, I have kept always by me the little Bible you
gave me on my birthday--I have treasured it, and I know it has made me a
better girl, because it makes me always think of your goodness--but I
couldn't have gone there, Joel--and it does seem as if you need not have
gone--and that marrying is so odious--"
"You shall see how little you had to fear of that doctrine which God has
seen fit to reveal to these good men. I tell you now, Prue, I shall wed
no woman but you. Nor am I giving you up. Don't think it. I am doing my
duty and trusting God to bring you to me. I know He will do it--I tell
you there is the spirit of some strange, awful strength in me, which
tells me to ask what I will and it shall be given--to seek to do
anything, how great or hard soever, and a giant's, a god's strength will
rest in me. And so I know you will come. You will always think of me
so,--waiting for you--somehow, somewhere. Every day you must think it,
at any idle moment when I come to your mind; every night when you waken
in the dark and silence, you must think, 'Wherever he is, he is waiting
for me, perhaps awake as I am now, praying, with a power that will
surely draw me.' You will come somehow. Perhaps, when I reach winter
quarters, you will have changed your mind. One never knows how God may
fashion these little providences. But He will bring you safe to me out
of that Gentile perdition. Remember, child, God has set his hand in
these last days to save the human family from the ruins of the fall, and
some way, He alone knows how, you will come to me and find me waiting."
"As if you needed to wait for me when I am here now ready for you,
willing to be taken!"
"Don't, don't, dear! There are two of me now, and one can't stand the
pain. There is a man in me, sworn to do a man's work like a man, and
duty to God and the priesthood has big chains around his heart dragging
it across the river. But, low, now--there is a little, forlorn boy in
me, too--a poor, crying, whimpering, babyish little boy, who dreamed of
you and longed for you and was promised you, and who will never get well
of losing you. Oh, I know it well enough--his tears will never dry, his
heart will always have a big hurt in it--and your face will always be so
fresh and clear in it!"
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into the face under
the bonnet.
"Let me make sure I shall lose no look of you, from little tilted chin,
and lips of scarlet thread, and little teeth like grains of rice, and
eyes into which I used to wander and wonder so far--"
She looked past him and stepped back.
"Captain Girnway is coming for me--yonder, away down the street. He
takes me to Carthage."
His face hardened as he looked over his shoulder.
"I shall never wed any woman but you. Can you feel as deeply as that?
Will you wed no man but me?"
She fluttered the cherry ribbons on the bonnet and fixed a stray curl in
front of one ear.
"Have you a right to ask that? I might wait a time for you to come
back--to your senses and to me, but--"
"Good-bye, darling!".
"What, will you go that way--not kiss me? He is still two blocks away."
"I am so weak for you, sweet--the little boy in me is crying for you,
but he must not have what he wants. What he wants would leave his heart
rebellious and not perfect with the Lord. It's best not," he continued,
with an effort at a smile and in a steadier tone. "It would mean so much
to me--oh, so very much to me--and so very little to you--and that's no
real kiss. I'd rather remember none of that kind--and don't think I was
churlish--it's only because the little boy--I will go after my father
now, and God bless you!"
He turned away. A few paces on he met Captain Girnway, jaunty, debonair,
smiling, handsome in his brass-buttoned uniform of the Carthage Grays.
"I have just left the ferry, Mr. Rae. The wagon with your mother has
gone over. The other had not yet come down. Some of the men appear to be
a little rough this morning. Your people are apt to provoke them by
being too outspoken, but I left special orders for the good treatment of
yourself and outfit."
With a half-smothered "thank you," he passed on, not trusting himself to
say more to one who was not only the enemy of his people, but bent,
seemingly, on deluding a young woman to the loss of her soul. He heard
their voices in cheerful greeting, but did not turn back. With eyes to
the front and shoulders squared he kept stiffly on his way through the
silent, deserted streets to the ferry.
Fifteen minutes' walk brought him to the now busy waterside. The ferry,
a flat boat propelled by long oars, was landing when he came into view,
and he saw his father's wagon driven on. He sped down the hill, pushed
through the crowd of soldiers standing about, and hurried forward on the
boat to let the old man know he had come. But on the seat was another
than his father. He recognised the man, and called to him.
"What are you doing there, Brother Keaton? Where's my father?"
The man had shrunk back under the wagon-cover, having seemingly been
frightened by the soldiers.
"I've taken your father's place, Brother Rae."
"Did he cross with Brother Wright?"
"Yes--he--" The man hesitated. Then came an interruption from the
shore.
"Come, clear the gangway there so we can load! Here are some more of the
damned rats we've hunted out of their holes!"
The speaker made a half-playful lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt,
yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child
in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind
picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the
bayonet-point, and his head was seen to be shaven. The crowd on the bank
laughed loud at his clumsiness and at his grotesque head. Joel Rae ran
to help him forward on the boat.
"Thank you, Brother--I'm just up from the fever-bed--they shaved my head
for it--and so I lost my hat--thank you--here we shall be warm if only
the sun comes out."
Joel went back to help on others who came, a feeble, bedraggled dozen or
so that had clung despairingly to their only shelter until they were
driven out.
"You can stay here in safety, you know, if you renounce Joseph Smith and
his works--they will give you food and shelter." He repeated it to each
little group of the dispirited wretches as they staggered past him, but
they replied staunchly by word or look, and one man, in the throes of a
chill, swung his cap and uttered a feeble "Hurrah for the new Zion!"
When they were all on with their meagre belongings, he called again to
the man in the wagon.
"Brother Keaton, my father went across, did he?"
Several of the men on shore answered him.
"Yes"--"Old white-whiskered death's-head went over the river"--"Over
here"--"A sassy old codger he was"--"He got his needings, too"--"Got his
needings--"
They cast off the line and the oars began to dip.
"And you'll get your needings, too, if you come back, remember that!
That's the last of you, and we'll have no more vermin like you. Now see
what old Joe Smith, the white-hat prophet, can do for you in the Indian
territory!"
He stood at the stern of the boat, shivering as he looked at the
current, swift, cold, and gray under the sunless sky. He feared some
indignity had been offered to his father. They had looked at one another
queerly when they answered his questions. He went forward to the wagon
again.
"Brother Keaton, you're sure my father is all right?"
"I am sure he's all right, Brother Rae."
Content with this, at last, he watched the farther flat shore of the
Mississippi, with its low fringe of green along the edge, where they
were to land and be at last out of the mob's reach. He repeated his
father's words: "Thank God, they're like all snakes; they can't jump
beyond their own length."
The confusion of landing and the preparations for an immediate start
drove for the time all other thoughts from his mind. It had been
determined to get the little band at once out of the marshy spot where
the camp had been made. The teams were soon hitched, the wagons loaded,
and the train ready to move. He surveyed it, a hundred poor wagons, many
of them without cover, loaded to the full with such nondescript
belongings as a house-dwelling people, suddenly put out on the open
road, would hurriedly snatch as they fled. And the people made his heart
ache, even to the deadening of his own sorrow, as he noted their
wobegoneness. For these were the sick, the infirm, the poor, the
inefficient, who had been unable for one reason or another to migrate
with the main body of the Saints earlier in the season. Many of them
were now racked by fever from sleeping on the damp ground. These bade
fair not to outlast some of the lumbering carts that threatened at every
rough spot to jolt apart.
Yet the line bravely formed to the order of Seth Wright as captain, and
the march began. Looking back, he saw peaceful Nauvoo, its houses and
gardens, softened by the cloudy sky and the autumn haze, clustering
under the shelter of their temple spire,--their temple and their houses,
of which they were now despoiled by a mob's fury. Ahead he saw the road
to the West, a hard road, as he knew,--one he could not hope they should
cross without leaving more graves by the way; but Zion was at the end.
The wagons and carts creaked and strained and rattled under their
swaying loads, and the line gradually defined itself along the road from
the confused jumble at the camp. He remembered his father again now, and
hurried forward to assure himself that all was right. As he overtook
along the way the stumbling ones obliged to walk, he tried to cheer
them.
"Only a short march to-day, brothers. Our camp is at Sugar Creek, nine
miles--so take your time this first day."
Near the head of the train were his own two wagons, and beside the first
walked Seth Wright and Keaton, in low, earnest converse. As he came up
to them the Bishop spoke.
"I got Wes' and Alec Gregg to drive awhile so we could stretch our
legs." But then came a quick change of tone, as they halted by the road.
"Joel, there's no use beatin' about the bush--them devils at the ferry
jest now drowned your pa."
He went cold all over. Keaton, looking sympathetic but frightened, spoke
next.
"You ought to thank me, Brother Rae, for not telling you on the other
side, when you asked me. I knew better. Because, why? Because I knew
you'd fly off the handle and get yourself killed, and then your ma'd be
left all alone, that's why, now--and prob'ly they'd 'a' wound up by
dumping the whole passle of us bag and baggage into the stream. And it
wa'n't any use, your father bein' dead and gone."
The Bishop took up the burden, slapping him cordially on the back.
"Come, come,--hearten up, now! Your pa's been made a martyr--he's
beautified his inheritance in Zion--whinin' won't do no good."
He drew himself up with a shrug, as if to throw off an invisible burden,
and answered, calmly:
"I'm not whining, Bishop. Perhaps you were right not to tell me over
there, Keaton. I'd have made trouble for you all." He smiled painfully
in his effort to control himself. "Were you there, Bishop?"
"No, I'd already gone acrost. Keaton here saw it."
Keaton took up the tale.
"I was there when the old gentleman drove down singing, 'Lo, the Gentile
chain is broken.' He was awful chipper. Then one of 'em called him old
Father Time, and he answered back. I disremember what, but, any way, one
word fired another until they was cussin' Giles Rae up hill and down
dale, and instead of keepin' his head shet like he had ought to have
done, he was prophesyin' curses, desolations, famines, and pestilences
on 'em all, and callin' 'em enemies of Christ. He was sassy--I can't
deny that--and that's where he wa'n't wise. Some of the mobocrats was
drunk and some was mad; they was all in their high-heeled boots one way
or another, and he enraged 'em more. So he says, finally, 'The Jews
fell,' he says, 'because they wouldn't receive their Messiah, the
Shiloh, the Saviour. They wet their hands,' he says, 'in the best blood
that had flowed through the lineage of Judah, and they had to pay the
cost. And so will you cowards of Illinois,' he says, 'have to pay the
penalty for sheddin' the blood of Joseph Smith, the best blood that has
flowed since the Lord's Christ,' he says. 'The wrath of God,' he says,
'will abide upon you.' The old gentleman was a powerful denouncer when
he was in the spirit of it--"
"Come, come, Keaton, hurry, for God's sake--get on!"
"And he made 'em so mad, a-settin' up there so peart and brave before
'em, givin' 'em as good as they sent--givin' 'em hell right to their
faces, you might say, that at last they made for him, some of them that
you could see had been puttin' a new faucet into the cider barrel. I saw
they meant to do him a mischief--but Lord! what could I do against
fifty, being then in the midst of a chill? Well, they drug him off the
seat, and said, 'Now, you old rat, own up that Holy Joe was a danged
fraud;' or something like that. But he was that sanctified and
stubborn--' Better to suffer stripes for the testimony of Christ,' he
says, 'than to fall by the sin of denial!' Then they drug him to the
bank, one on each side, and says, 'We baptise you in the holy name of
Brockman,' and in they dumped him--backwards, mind you! I saw then they
was in a slippery place where it was deep and the current awful strong.
But they hauled him out, and says again, 'Do you renounce Holy Joe Smith
and all his works?' The poor old fellow couldn't talk a word for the
chill, but he shook his head like sixty--as stubborn as you'd wish. So
they said, 'Damn you! here's another, then. We baptise you in the name
of James K. Polk, President of the United States!' and in they threw him
again. Whether they done it on purpose or not, I wouldn't like to say,
but that time his coat collar slipped out of their hands and down he
went. He came up ten feet down-stream and quite a ways out, and they
hooted at him. I seen him come up once after that, and then they see he
couldn't swim a stroke, but little they cared. And I never saw him
again. I jest took hold of the team and drove it on the boat, scared to
death for what you'd do when you come,--so I kept still and they kept
still. But remember, it's only another debt the blood of the Gentiles
will have to pay--"
"Either here on earth or in hell," said the Bishop.
"And the soul of your poor pa is now warm and dry and happy in the
presence of his Lord God."