Part 5 (1/2)
”What had he to do with me?” she asked, astonished.
”I just saw you stand there, and him a-sitting, but a voice in my own heart seemed to say--”
”What?”
”It was one of my revelations. If I tell you, you won't believe it.
Howsomever, I think it's my duty to tell you, although you may tell your folks, and they may persecute me.” He paused here, and when he began again it was in a different tone of voice and with a singing cadence.
”The voice said, 'I say unto thee, she shall see the white stone, and shall be told the thing that she shall do for the salvation of her soul; and I say unto thee, Joseph Smith junior, that thou shalt say unto her to look upon the stone, for she is chosen to go through suffering and grief for a little s.p.a.ce, and after that to have great riches and honour, and in the world to come life everlasting.'”
As he spoke he was holding up the stone, which glistened in the sunlight, before her eyes.
Susannah stared at it to prove to herself that there was nothing remarkable about it. The feeling of opposition seemed to die of itself, and then she had a curious sensation of arousing herself with a start from a fixed posture and momentary oblivion. That afternoon as she was going home, and in the following days, phrases and sentences from the prophecy which Joseph Smith had p.r.o.nounced in regard to her clung to her mind. In disdain she tried to tell herself that the man was mad; in childlike wonder she considered what might be the mystery of the vision within the stone and the prophecy if he were not mad. She had never heard of crystal-gazing; the phrase ”mental automatism” had not then been invented by the psychologists; still less could she suspect that she herself might have come partially under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. The large kindliness of the new prophet, the steady sobriety and childlikeness of his demeanour, the absence of any appearance of policy or premeditation, were not in harmony with fraud or madness. Her gentle intelligence was puzzled, as all the candid historians of this man have since been puzzled. Then, tired of the puzzle, she fell again to contemplating sc.r.a.ps of his speech, which, having a Scriptural sound, suggested piety. ”She shall be told the thing that she shall do for the salvation of her soul,” ”She is chosen to go through suffering and grief for a little s.p.a.ce.” How strange if, impossible as it might seem, these words had come to her--to her--direct from the mind of the Almighty!
CHAPTER VI.
Some days after this Susannah sat alone at the window of the family room, the long white seam on which she was at work enveloping her knees.
Far off on the horizon the c.u.mulous clouds lay with level under-ridges, their upper outlines softly heaped in pearly lights and shades of dun and gray. Beneath them the hilly line of the forest was broken distinctly against the cloud by the spikes of giant pines. That far outline was blue, not the turquoise blue of the sky above the clouds, but the blue that we see on cabbage leaves, or such blue as the moonlight makes when it falls through a frosted pane--steel blue, so full of light as to be luminous in itself. From this the nearer contour of the forest emerged, painted in green, with patches and streaks of russet; the nearer groves were beginning to change colour, and, vivid in the sunlight, the fields were yellow. From the top of a low hill which met the sky came the white road winding over rise and hollow till it pa.s.sed the door. Who has not felt the invitation, silent, persistent, of a road that leads through a lonely land to the unseen beyond the hill?
Susannah was again alone in the house; this time Ephraim was absent with his mother, and her uncle was at the mill. On the white road she saw a man approaching whose dress showed him to be Smith's Quaker convert, Angel Halsey, a name she had conned till it had become familiar. He did not pa.s.s, but opened the gate of the small garden path and came up between the two borders of sweet-smelling box. In the garden China asters, zenias, and prince's feather, dahlias, marigolds, and love-lies-bleeding were falling over one another in luxuriant waste. The young man neither looked to night nor to left. He scanned the house eagerly, and his eyes found the window at which Susannah sat. He stepped across the flowers and stood, his blonde face upturned, below the open sash. Under his light eyebrows his hazel eyes shone with a singularly bright and exalted expression.
”Come, friend Susannah,” said he, ”I have been sent to bring you to witness my baptism,” and with that he turned and walked slowly down the path, as if waiting for her to follow.
Susannah, filled with surprise, watched him as he made slowly for the gate, as if a.s.sured that she would come. When he got to it he set it open, and, holding it, looked back.
She dropped the long folds of muslin, and they fell upon the floor knee-deep about her; she stepped out of them and walked across the old familiar living-room, with its long strips of worn rag-carpet, its old polished chairs, and smoky walls. The face of the eight-day clock stared hard at her with impa.s.sive yet kindly glance, but its voice only steadily recorded that the moments were pa.s.sing one by one, like to all other moments.
Susannah went out of the door. The sun drew forth aromatic scent from the borders of box, and her light skirt brushed the blossoms that leaned too far over. Outside the wicket gate at which the young man stood was a young quince tree laden with pale-green fruit. Susannah let her eyes rest upon it as she spoke: she even let her mind wander for a second to think how soon the fruit would be gathered.
”Why should I come to see your baptism?” she asked, with her voice on the upward cadence.
The young man blushed deeply. ”I am come to thee with a message from heaven.” He glanced upward to the great sky that was the colour of turquoise, cloudless, serene.
”It is a strange errand.” There was a touch of reproof in her voice, and yet also the vibration of awe-struck inquiry. Her mind rushed at once to the memory of Joseph Smith's prophecy.
”Come, friend,” said the young Quaker very gently.
”I can't possibly go.”
His strange reply was, ”With G.o.d all things are possible.”
The text fell upon her mind with force.
”Come,” he said gently, and he motioned that he would shut the gate behind her.
”Not now; my shoes are not stout; I have no bonnet or shawl.”