_The Lion of the Lord Sends an Order_
They reached home in very different states of mind. The girl was eager
for the solitude of her favourite nook in the canon, where she could
dream in peace of the wonderland she had glimpsed; but the little bent
man was stirred by dread and chilled with forebodings. To him, as well
as to the girl, the change in the first city of Zion had been a thing to
wonder at. But what had thrilled her with amazed delight brought pain to
him. Zion was no longer held inviolate.
And now the truth was much clearer to him. Not only had the Lord
deferred His coming, but He had set His hand again to scatter Israel for
its sin. Instead of letting them stay alone in their mountain retreat
until the beginning of His reign on earth, He had brought the Gentiles
upon them in overwhelming numbers. Where once a thousand miles of
wilderness lay between them and Gentile wickedness, they were now hemmed
about with it, and even it polluted the streets of the holy city itself.
Far on the east the adventurous Gentile had first pushed out of the
timber to the richly grassed prairies; then, later, on to the plains,
scorched brown with their sparse grass, driving herds of cattle ahead,
and stopping to make farms by the way. And now on the west, on the east,
and on the north, the Lord had let them pitch their tents and build
their cabins, where they would barter their lives for gold and flocks
and furs and timber, for orchard fruits and the grains of the field.
Little by little they had ventured toward the outer ramparts of Israel,
their numbers increasing year by year, and the daring of their
onslaughts against the desert and mountain wastes. With the rifle and
the axe they had made Zion but a station on the great highway between
the seas; a place where curious and irreverent Gentiles stopped to gaze
in wonder at and perhaps to mock the Lord's chosen; a place that would
become but one link in a chain of Gentile cities, that would be forced
to conform to the meretricious customs of Gentile benightedness.
It had been a fine vengeance upon them for their sin; one not unworthy
of Him who wrought it. It had come so insidiously, with such apparent
naturalness, little by little--a settler here, a settler there; here an
acre of gray desert charmed to yellow wheat; there a pouch of shining
gold washed from the burning sands; another wagon-train with hopeful men
and faithful women; a cabin, two cabins, a settlement, a schoolhouse, a
land of unwalled villages,--and democracy; a wicked government of men
set up in the very face and front of God-governed Israel.
At first they had come with ox-teams, but this was slow, and the big
Kentucky mules brought them faster; then had come the great rolling
Concord stages with their six horses; then the folly of an electric
telegraph, so that instant communication might be had with far-off
Babylon; and now the capstone in the arch of the Lord's vengeance,--a
railway,--flashing its crowded coaches over the Saints' old trail in
sixty easy hours,--a trail they had covered with their oxen in ninety
days of hardship. The rock of their faith would now be riven, the veil
of their temple rent, and their leaders corrupted.
Even of Brigham, the daring already told tales that promised this last
thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and
tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the
canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways,
and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he
rendered no stewardship, and hiding away millions of the dollars for
which the faithful had toiled themselves into desert graves. Truly,
thought Joel Rae, that bloody day in the Meadows had been cunningly
avenged.
One morning, a few weeks after he had reached home from the north, he
received a call from Seth Wright.
"Here's a letter Brother Brigham wanted me to be sure and give you,"
said this good man. "He said he didn't know you was allowing to start
back so soon, or he'd have seen you in person."
He took the letter and glanced at the superscription, written in
Brigham's rather unformed but plain and very decided-looking hand.
"So you've been north, Brother Seth? What do you think of Israel there?"
The views of the Wild Ram of the Mountains partook in certain ways of
his own discouragement.
"Zion has run to seed, Brother Rae; the rank weeds of Babylon is a-goin'
to choke it out, root and branch! We ain't got no chance to live a pure
and Godly life any longer, with railroads coming in, and Gentiles with
their fancy contraptions. It weakens the spirit, and it plays the very
hob with the women. Soon as they git up there now, and see them new
styles from St. Looey or Chicago, they git downright daft. No more
homespun for 'em, no more valley tan, no more parched corn for coffee,
nor beet molasses nor unbolted flour. Oh, I know what I'm talkin'
about."
The tone of the good man became as of one who remembers hurts put upon
his own soul. He continued:
"You no sooner let a woman git out of the wagon there now than she's
crazy for a pink nubia, and a shell breastpin, and a dress-pattern, and
a whole bolt of factory and a set of chiny cups and saucers and some of
this here perfumery soap. And _that_ don't do 'em. Then they let out a
yell for varnished rockin'-cheers with flowers painted all over 'em in
different colours, and they tell you they got to have bristles
carpet--bristles on it that long, prob'ly!" The injured man indicated a
length of some eighteen or twenty inches.
"Of course all them grand things would please our feelings, but they
take a woman's mind off of the Lord, and she neglects her work in the
field, and then pretty soon the Lord gets mad and sics the Gentiles on
to us again. But I made my women toe the mark mighty quick, I told 'em
they could all have one day a week to work out, and make a little
pin-money, hoein' potatoes or plantin' corn or some such business, and
every cent they earned that way they could squander on this here
pink-and-blue soap, if they was a mind to; but not a York shilling of my
money could they have for such persuasions of Satan--not while we got
plenty of soap-grease and wood-ashes to make lye of and a soap-kittle
that cost four eighty-five, in the very Lord's stronghold. I dress my
women comfortable and feed 'em well--not much variety but plenty _of_,
and I've done right by 'em as a husband, and I tell 'em if they want to
be led away now into the sinful path of worldliness, why, I ain't goin'
to have any ruthers about it at all! But you be careful, Brother Rae,
about turning your women loose in one of them ungodly stores up there.
That reminds me, you had Prudence up to Conference, and I guess you
don't know what that letter's about."
"Why, no; do you?"
"Well, Brother Brigham only let a word or two drop, but plain enough; he
don't have to use many. He was a little mite afraid some one down here
would cut in ahead of him."
Joel Rae had torn open the big blue envelope in a sudden fear, and now
he read in Brigham's well-known script:--
"DEAR BROT. JOEL:--
"I was ancus to see more of your daughter, and would of kept her hear at
my house if you had not hurried off. I will let you seal her to me when
I come to Pine valle next, late this summer or after Oct. conference. If
anything happens and I am to bisy will have you bring her hear. Tell her
of this and what it will mean to her in the Lord's kingdom and do not
let her company with gentiles or with any of the young brethren around
there that might put Notions into her head. Try to due right and never
faint in well duing, keep the faith of the gospel and I pray the Lord to
bless you. BRIGHAM YOUNG."
The shrewd old face of the Bishop had wrinkled into a smile of quiet
observation as the other read the letter. In relating the incident to
the Entablature of Truth subsequently, he said of Joel Rae at the moment
he looked up from this letter: "He'll never be whiter when he's dead! I
see in a minute that the old man had him on the bark."
"You know what's in this, Brother Seth--you know that Brigham wants
Prudence?" Joel Rae had asked, looking up from the letter, upon which
both his hands had closed tightly.
"Well, I told you he dropped a word or two, jest by way of keeping off
the Princes of Israel down here."
"I must go to Salt Lake at once and talk to him."
"Take her along; likely he'll marry her right off."
"But I can't--I couldn't--Brother Seth, I wish her not to marry him."
The Bishop stared blankly at him, his amazement freezing upon his lips,
almost, the words he uttered.
"Not--want--her--to marry--Brother Brigham Young, Prophet, Seer, and
Revelator, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
in all the world!"
"I must go up and talk to him at once."
"You won't talk him out of it. Brother Brigham has the habit of
prevailing. Of course, he's closer than Dick's hat-band, but she'll have
the best there is until he takes another."
"He may listen to reason--"
"Reason?--why, man, what more reason could he want,--with that splendid
young critter before him, throwing back her head, and flashing her big,
shiny eyes, and lifting her red lips over them little white
teeth--reason enough for Brother Brigham--or for other people I could
name!"
"But he wouldn't be so hard--taking her away from me--"
Something in the tones of this appeal seemed to touch even the heart of
the Wild Ram of the Mountains, though it told of a suffering he could
not understand.
"Brigham is very sot in his ways," he said, after a little, with a
curious soft kindness in his voice,--"in fact, a _sotter_ man I never
knew!"
He drove off, leaving the other staring at the letter now crumpled in
his hand. He also said, in his subsequent narrative to the Entablature
of Truth: "You know I've always took Brother Rae for jest a natural born
_not_, a shy little cuss that could be whiffed around by anything and
everything, but when I drove off he had a plumb ornery fighting look in
them deep-set eyes of his, and blame me if I didn't someway feel sorry
for him,--he's that warped up, like an old water-soaked sycamore plank
that gits laid out in the sun."
But this look of belligerence had quickly passed from the face of Joel
Rae when the first heat of his resentment had cooled.
After that he merely suffered, torn by his reverence for Brigham, who
represented on earth no less a power than the first person of the
Trinity, and by the love for this child who held him to a past made
beautiful by his love for her mother,--by a thousand youthful dreams and
fancies and wayward hopes that he had kept fresh through all the years;
torn between Brigham, whose word was as the word of God, and Prudence
who was the living flower of her dead mother and all his dead hopes.
Could he persuade Brigham to leave her? The idea of refusing him, if he
should persist, was not seriously to be thought of. For twenty-five
years he, in common with the other Saints, had held Brigham's lightest
command to be above all earthly law; to be indeed the revealed will of
God. His kingship in things material no less than in things spiritual
had been absolute, undisputed, undoubted--indeed, gloried in by the
people as much as Brigham himself gloried when he declared it in and out
of the tabernacle. Their blind obedience had been his by divine right,
by virtue of his iron will, his matchless courage, his tireless spirit,
and his understanding of their hearts and their needs, born of his
common suffering with them. Nothing could be done without his sanction.
No man could enter a business, or change his home from north to south,
without first securing his approval; even the merchants who went east or
west for goods must first report to him their wishes, to see if he had
contrary orders for them! From the invitation list of a ball to the
financing of a corporation, his word was law; in matters of marriage as
well--no man daring even to seek a wife until the Prophet had approved
his choice. The whole valley for five hundred miles was filled with his
power as with another air that the Saints must breathe. In his
oft-repeated own phrase, it was his God-given right to dictate all
matters, "even to the ribbons a woman should wear, or the setting up of
a stocking." And his people had not only submitted blindly to his rule,
but had reverenced and even loved him for it.
Twenty-five years of such allegiance, preceded by a youth in which the
same gospel of obedience was bred into his marrow--this was not to be
thrown off by a mere heartache; not to be more than striven against,
half-heartedly, in the first moment of anguish.
He thought of Brigham's home in the Lion House, the score or so of
plain, elderly women, hard-working, simple-minded; the few favourites of
his later years, women of sightlier exteriors; and he pictured the long
dining-room, where, at three o'clock each afternoon, to the sound of a
bell, these wives and half a hundred children marched in, while the
Prophet sat benignantly at the head of the table and blessed the meal.
He tried to fix Prudence in this picture, but at every effort he saw,
not her, the shy, sweet woman, full of surprised tenderness, but a
creature hardened, debased, devoid of charm, dehumanised, a brood-beast
of the field.
And yet this was not rebellion. His mind was clear as to that. He could
not refuse, even had refusal not been to incur the severest penalties
both in this world and in the world to come. The habit of obedience was
all-powerful.
Presently he saw Prudence coming across the fields in the late
afternoon from the road that led to the canon. He watched her jealously
until she drew near, then called her to him. In a few words he told her
very gravely the honour that was to be done her.
When she fully understood, he noted that her mind seemed to attain an
unusual clearness, her speech a new conciseness; that she was displaying
a force of will he had never before suspected.
Her reply, in effect, was that she would not marry Brigham Young if all
the angels in heaven came to entreat her; that the thought was not a
pretty one; and that the matter might be considered settled at that very
moment. "It's too silly to talk about," she concluded.
Almost fearfully he looked at her, yielding a little to her spirit of
rebellion, yet trying not to yield; trying not to rejoice in the amused
flash of her dark eyes and the decision of her tones. But then, as he
looked, and as she still faced him, radiant in her confidence, he felt
himself going with her--plunging into the tempting wave of apostasy.