The Mormon Prophet by Lily Dougall (best books for 20 year olds TXT) 📕

/> fowler: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the
name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."


While she was exalted by the song she saw the face of her friend the Danite for the first time since the night on which they had ridden so far together. He was standing now upon the outskirts of the crowd as one who had newly come from a solitary journey. When he met Susannah's eye his solitary look passed into one of lofty and intense comradeship. He ran to her and embraced her, and emptied an inner pocket of a purse of money which he thrust eagerly into her possession.

"I have killed one of them," he said, speaking eagerly, as a child tells of some exploit. "His pockets were fat with money, and it is yours."

"See!" He took the fragment of linen upon which the stain of Halsey's blood had turned dark with time, and showed her a new and brighter stain upon its edges.

All around them were men and women, who now, for the first time since the hour of some terrible parting, spied kindred or comrades. By a common impulse these moved toward one another, and there was an interlude in the service for sobs of joy and frantic embracings, and many men and women clasped one another who could claim no kindred, and none forbade, for tears of mutual love were in all eyes.

After that, in the streets or in chance meetings in the houses, the remembrance of this festival of rapturous comradeship gave a new standard to the manners of private life. The Saints had, as it were, passed from death unto life; former things had passed away; the praises of God were ever upon their lips; they entered with joy into a kingdom of love which they doubted not God had ordained for his elect; many a command of Scripture became illumined with a new practical meaning. "Greet _all_ the brethren with a holy kiss." "Greet ye one another with a kiss of charity."

Susannah was not much abroad, but she saw the new customs inaugurated. Believing that they must be transient, knowing, too, that the fierce undercurrent that they expressed must have outlet, and was not of that range of emotions which had to do with the common relationships of life, she felt no shock of offended sentiment. But in a short space of time, as Elvira grew better, Susannah perceived that the experimental nature of the new life was a dissipation to weaker minds. This grieved her because of the sacred memory of her husband's efforts for these people, and because, attuned by party spirit, she entertained a nervous personal desire that they should acquit themselves well. Just here she found occupation; she gathered the young girls about her in a temporary school, and set herself to soothe and calm the excitement of the women. The work was intended to last but a few weeks, until Ephraim's answer came.

To the unspeakable joy of his followers, Joseph Smith appeared suddenly in Quincy. It appeared to be true, as Darling said, that the Missouri authorities could in fact find no charge on which to try him.

Smith, with his brother Hyrum and their fellows, had suffered severely, but later their confinement had been more easy, and the news of the triumphant gathering of his people, together with the excitement of the escape, had induced in Smith a mood which spurned past failures with a foot that sped to a new goal. The acclamation, the sincere and touching joy, with which Smith was received by men and women and children, were enough to raise any man in his own esteem, and to set free the ambition which had been perhaps drooping in confinement.

Smith had not been in Quincy twenty-four hours before he mastered the situation there in all its details. He promptly sent out a decree against the new doctrine of what he called "lax manners." He preached a great sermon in the open air that night. "A man shall kiss his own wife and daughters and no other women," said Smith. The elders who had preached from St. Paul's texts on the subject were accused of error and called upon to recant. Smith commanded that the women should work and the children should study, and he publicly pronounced Susannah to be a fitting model for the women and a fitting teacher for the young. Susannah had not as yet met Smith face to face when she found herself made, as it were, an object of licensed admiration.


CHAPTER XVI.

It was that same evening, after Smith's commendation of Susannah, that Darling decided to lay the destruction of her letter before the prophet, hoping for approval.

Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the tithing office, giving voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men were in a corner of the large shed in which the stores were kept, a corner fenced off for an office by a low wooden partition. The candle flickered on the table between them.

The business side of Smith's soul was uppermost. He had power to keep in mind a huge number of details, and to classify them, and he estimated the relative importance of the classes as no other man would have estimated it.

Darling interrupted before Smith's interest in business began to wane. He prefaced his communication concerning Susannah by speaking of the much shepherding needed by the sheep. Some, he said, had done worse than be lax in manners; some had presumed to have revelations; some had doubted the faith.

Here Darling paused, feeling sure of rousing Smith to the mood he desired.

At the mention of revelations Smith's soul took a turn, like a ball on its axis; the plain speech that he had been using about business and stores and accounts changed into phraseology of a Scriptural cast, and the shrewd glance of his blue eye into a more distraught and distant look. Heretofore, as Darling well knew, heresy had been a greater evil in his eyes than any other; but Smith had come now out of long months of prison; days and nights in which a horrible death had faced him closely had not passed over this particular soul of his dreams without moulding it. It is noticed by all his historians that after this period he spoke little "by revelation," in comparison with his former full habit in this respect. At Darling's abrupt speech he sighed heavily. He looked, not at Darling as before, but at some vague object beyond him.

"There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy," he said wearily, and then, gathering himself up with more pompous unction, he asked of the surprised Darling, "Who art thou that judgest another?"

Darling had grown fatter since he came to Quincy; the lines of haggard care were still upon his face, but were modified by dimples of good cheer. Much taken aback by the unexpected rebuff, he rubbed his head.

"But, Mr. Smith, if they are all going to be allowed to think whatever they like--"

The obvious difficulty of church government under these conditions confronted the nobler impulse of humility in the visionary's mind. "When have I said, Brother Darling, that they all should think what they like? But, behold, I say unto thee, it is not with the Lord to save with many or with few, but by whom he will send."

This was a little vague as to grammar and as to sense, but Darling had not the ability to criticise. He only perceived that to secure commendation he must be tactful in the setting forth of his act.

"It was in the case of Sister Susannah Halsey--" he began again apologetically.

A more eager look came into Smith's eyes; still a third phase of his character there was, the soul of his personal affections, and this began to merge now with his religious self. "Hath she prophesied? Hath any revelation been granted to her?"

If Darling had not understood the prophetical vein, he did understand a certain vibration in this tone. "Ha!" thought he, "if the prophet ain't a bit soft on her himself I'm out." He had lowered his eyes, and now he said evasively, "It is our sister Elvira on whom the spirit of prophecy has fallen; you will have heard how she gave praise concerning you before the Saints upon the road and was moved to dance before the Lord."

Smith saw through the evasion, but by shrewd reading of the sanctimonious face, saw also the inward suspicion as clearly as if Darling had spoken it. His tone and manner betrayed him no more.

"The head of our sister Elvira is not always set firmly on her shoulders," he remarked, "but I am glad if the Lord has given her grace."

"I've been hoping that he'd give grace to our sister Susannah, for she's been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to leave us."

Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coarser understanding.

"'Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the patience out of any one as they work the milk out of butter, and Sister Susannah came with a letter. She gave it to me unsealed."

"Was she without wax to seal it?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone. Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith's heart.

"Waal, I dunno" (which was a lie). "Mebbe she had no wax--I didn't think of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter. 'Twas too late for the mail; 'twas too heavy for one stamp. An' I didn't like to tell her, poor thing, that we'd mighty little to spend on stamps. So after she'd gone I just had a look to see who it was to."

"The address would be on the outside?" Smith rose, hat in hand, as if to depart, but fixed his eyes on the candle till Darling should have done.

"The name gave me very little hint as to whether the matter was worth the two stamps, so I just had a glance inside. Thought it might be but a line asking money of her friends, which, under the sad circumstances, of course I knew you'd rather the Church would supply."

This drew the first spark of the approval he was expecting. "Certainly, certainly, the widows and the orphans of those who have perished for the truth must ever be our most tender care."

"Exactly so, prophet; I knew that would be your opinion; so when I saw that our sister had felt drove to asking for money from some fellow--I guess there must have been some sweethearting between him and her before she married Halsey. She said in this letter that she'd go to him if he'd send her cash. She said as how she thought the religion of the Latter-Day Saints was a lie; but of course I could see it was not her right judgment, that she was awful lonesome."

"It was taking a great liberty, Mr. Darling." Smith tapped his stick upon the floor. He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder. "Our sister, Mrs. Halsey, is not--" he coughed slightly, and sought by prophetical phrases to explain that Susannah was not upon the level of Darling and his kind--"is not, as it would be said in the Scriptures, among